


with my own blood in my mouth

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Justice League of America's Vibe (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Cisco Ramon-centric, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, cisco ramon was always vibe, self destructive behavior, superpowers and how to have them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: It will take fifty years or so for Cisco to drift away.It will take longer than that for him to forget his friends ever even existed.It will take even longer for him to remember them again.





	with my own blood in my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> I already wrote one fic about Cisco struggling to deal with godlike powers, living as if it is our last life, so now here's another one that deals with the... less positive aspect of things. This completely ignores most of the Flash season five, because I can do whatever I want. 
> 
> [**CW:** this fic contains loose descriptions of self-destructive behavior, overstimulation, and vomiting, as well as other potentially gross things like mouth bleeding and nosebleeds.]

It takes fifty years or so for Cisco to drift away.

Time doesn’t go by fast for him. It’s the same as everybody else. He’s still human, or at least he is where it counts. The years still pass. But he’s not there for it, not anymore. He throws his mind out into the ocean of the multiverse and lets himself float there, more god than man. The multiverse guided him, once, and now he will guide it back, steering it like a ship onto the correct course.

He spends ten years perfecting that before he drifts away completely, figuring out how to pull and push on vibrations to control everything from his own heartbeat to the crush of the tides. Everything is vibrations, everything has a string that he can pull. Cisco laughs sometimes when he thinks about the time he spent believing that his powers had reached their limit, back when he hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. His laugh can level cities now, though, when he’s not careful, so he doesn’t often. That’s something he misses.

It’s not the only thing. Cisco misses his friends, too, even more that he misses laughter. He’s built himself a fortress here in this tucked away dimension, with everything that he could ever want. He even has the companionship of the people like him-the occasional visit from a doppelgänger, or Cindy, when she’s not repairing her world from the damage her mother dealt it. But that’s not the same.

He keeps an eye out for his friends. Kept an eye out for his friends. The people who used to be his friends? They haven’t seen each other in so long, an eternity for them, that it’s possible they’ve forgotten all about him. (Minds are so _ fragile.) _Cisco was there when Barry’s vibrations fizzled out like an extinguished candle, and he let him go instead of pulling him back, and he knows that somewhere Barry must be watching Wally save the world over and over again as he reaches heights Barry simply never could and smiling and waiting for the day when he joins him and leaves his daughter to fight the good fight.

Speedsters are easier for him to keep track of than other people. Right now, even as he drifts, he can prod at the connection at least a dozen of them have to the source of their power. Earth-6, Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-1, Earth-19, Earth-18, Earth-38, Earth-36, Earth-23, Earth-16, Earth-48, Earth-11… If Cisco wanted to, he could simply reach out and tug on the strand of the speedforce that connects them to their power, and shut them down for good. But he won’t. The world needs heroes and villains. A balance.

Normal humans are harder, though. Cisco keeps one eye on the future just to make sure Iris does alright, and she does. Gives birth to her children and watches them die just like she watched Barry die. Rescues her grandson and watches her granddaughter join a legion of people like her, young superheroes who want to make a difference. Becomes the respected head of the family that he knows her to be. All according to time and space and fate.

Still, he… Cisco may not be like the rest of them anymore, but when he watches Iris fall to her knees, crying her heartache to the sky when her twins die like their father did, he wants to be there for her. He wants to comfort her. He was there for her when Barry died, in a sense, he should be there for her for this. But he doesn’t leave his place. He keeps watching everything. He isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s the sense that something bad will happen if he stops.

Gradually, however, he shifts his focus to something broader. He looks at the whole of the universes in the multiverse, not just the place he used to live. The place where he was born. The Earth that still thrums in harmony with some of his veins. Why stick to one world, when so many others beckon? Why watch people as meaningless as ants in sand when he can look at the cosmic play as it happens?

So Cisco continues to stray further and further from the place he called home, until one day he simply lets go of the strings holding him back. It’s easier than he ever thought it would be. He drifts off into the universe, the spiral of silver galaxies and purple nebulas, the ripple of supernovas. Cisco thinks it’s beautiful.

Something tells him that someone he knew would have loved to see this. _ A closer look at the stars… _ Cisco shakes his head to shake the cobwebs and dreams out and accidentally explodes one of those stars. He’s adrift. He doesn’t have time to think about people who may or may not still be alive, people who he may have once known before he understood what he could do, what his true power was.

But that’s gotten him thinking about the past, and now Cisco can’t _ stop _thinking about it. It’s been fifty, sixty, two hundred years since any of them spoke. Why does he find himself seeing the glow of life on a far away planet and remembering someone who fought beside him, why does he feel the pull of lightning from another world and think of being held close, why does he see an alien flower (the only living thing on this world) and think of having someone to count on?

Cisco’s drifted away from something. Spun out too far into the sea of stars. He shouldn’t… he’s forgotten something. He’s forgotten important things. There was a _ reason _ he was keeping track of speedsters twenty years ago, wasn’t there? There was a _ reason _he watched that family so closely, a reason he believed in them so strongly, wasn’t there? There was a reason he never regarded the Kryptonians as a threat, wasn’t there? There was a reason he occasionally allowed the Croatoans and the Shadowpact to glimpse him, wasn’t there?

Cisco still needs to breathe, and suddenly he feels like he can’t. He’s forgotten things. He’s forgotten too many things, far too many things, he’s forgotten-he told himself he wouldn’t become this way, didn’t he? He told himself that he wouldn’t spin out so far, that he wouldn’t draw himself out so much he forgot who he was.

Before he can do any damage to the foundations of the multiverse, Cisco snaps back into himself like a rubberband pulled too far, retreating into his own head. Blood gushes from his nose-it’s been so long since that happened, so long since he felt the familiar pain in his head. He tends to that with a few pulls of string and then lets himself drift out again, on a much shorter leash this time.

He searches for anything that seems like _ home, _and finds it quickly, tracing down the line of sparks that leads to a girl alone in her room, playing with something on a tablet. Her skin is deep brown and her hair is fluffy and pulled back into a ponytail, with eyes that are almost golden in color.

Cisco drifts closer. He knows parts of her face. He knows the shape of her eyes, her ears, her dimples… how? She can’t be older than 19, and he’s been gone for so long… he slips closer and then lets himself dissolve. No. She’s not what he’s looking for. She’s not familiar enough.

But as he looks around, sliding through the barriers only he can see like they’re nothing more than soap bubbles, he can’t find anybody else. At least not anybody with a stronger connection than her, the girl he already got close to. Of course there’s a handful of them out there, and he does get close to them, too. 

A kid roaming around a suburban Gotham neighborhood, tailed by a teenager in all black who stops them from wandering into streets. A little boy using his mother’s lab, conducting experiments on a toy and clapping whenever it grows and shrinks. An old man who watches the sun set every day with a smile on his face and tells anyone who will listen about superheroes. But none of them are _ right. _ None of it’s _ right. _

Why can’t he remember? Why can’t he remember? Why can’t he remember? He swore he’d never forget them, didn’t he? Everything in his brain feels like it’s spiraling out of control, and he knows how dangerous that is, considering the hold he has over the vibrational threads woven into the tapestry of reality. But Cisco can’t _ stop. _ It’s slipping out of his fingers like he’s grabbing for ash stolen away by the wind, and he can’t do anything more than _ scream _as his world turns blue one last time-

Distantly, he’s aware of crashing through something. Breaking down walls that were never meant to be broken. Distantly, he’s aware of someone shouting his name, of hands on his shoulders. Clamping down tight in a way that instantly makes him flinch. Distantly, he’s aware that there’s blood spilling onto a clean white floor. Blood that’s his.

“Oh,” he croaks. “Ow.” 

And the blue turns into black.

* * *

Cisco thinks about origami.

Folds within folds within folds. A spiral of sound and equations and oceans. Cisco looks down at the water and sees the starry sky reflected, the multiverse laid bare before him. If he wanted to, he could sink into that water. He just did, didn’t he? His skin is still damp, his hair is still flat to his head, and he’s freezing cold.

“I hate you,” Cisco hisses into that water, cold and still and dark and frightening and oh-so-impassive. The waves roll with the force of it. Unbidden, Cisco remembers manipulating the vibrations of the world to create earthquakes that spawned tsunamis and volcanoes. “I hate you. You’ll _ never _ make me lose my friends. Not _ ever. _I won’t forget them. I’ll never forget them.”

The cold waves lap around his bare feet, sucking at his ankles. _ You just did, _ the waves seem to murmur. _ You drifted away and you never came back to them. You forgot them. You swore you wouldn’t and yet you did. _

“That wasn’t real,” Cisco spits back, and the force of his voice makes the black sand rumble. The sound just adds to his fury, and he can pull it deep within his chest to _ push _the ocean back. “It didn’t actually happen. It was just a vibe.”

Origami and string theory. Folds and knots. Vibes within vibes within vibes that go so deep he can’t see the blue anymore. Vibes within vibes that last for years in real time, making him live out all those moments without aging a day. A terrible prediction for the future not just because of the conditions of the world but because Cisco drifted out too far, an astronaut without a tether.

The multiverse laughs at him, and something so deep inside Cisco he can’t tell where it ends shrieks with fury as he rakes his fingers through a tangle of vibrations with grace he’s practiced for decades, yanking the string back _ hard _as the walls of the world he’s in curve around him, the waves roiling and the stars above him screaming as they start to blend into each other, silver and white and black splattering everywhere like wet paint-

That’s when he opens his eyes.

It’s also when he vomits, but it’s a lot more glamorous to say that Cisco woke up and immediately sat up with a smile instead of throwing up and barely managing to get it into the bucket and starting to cry almost as soon as he’s physically able to cry again, body shaking sobs that he makes silent without even thinking about it, drawing the sound back into himself.

Someone sets their hands on his shoulders and it sends such a shudder of _ wrong _through Cisco’s veins that he flinches, fingers hissing as too-hot energy meets the chilly air of the lab. (Strange. It’s never been hot before. His energy has always been cool and inviting. Cindy’s was warm, not his.) “Don’t touch me.”

It comes out much faster and much _ meaner _ than he was expecting it to, and he winces, ready to apologize and push past his discomfort to say _ of course _you can touch me, whatever you want, but the hands are already gone.

“Sorry,” Iris says quietly but sincerely. “I forgot that you don’t like to be touched.”

_ Lots of people do, _ Cisco wants to say. It’s because he’s such a tactile person, and because he’s okay with touching other people and tends to go out of his way to do it. Touching other people is fine. Touching inanimate objects is fine. But being touched by other people… not so good. Even on the rare occasion when they ask beforehand.

“S’okay,” he says instead. His voice is thick and the words are slurred. Iris offers him the bucket again and he shakes his head. Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. “I’m okay.” At least it comes out stronger this time. Less… sideways.

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes, enough to make his head hurt. He almost laughs. Iris is right here, comforting him, like he couldn’t reach out and touch her and tell her how she dies. He can feel the vibrations of everyone in this building. Everyone he could see. Vibes in vibes in vibes.

“I have to go,” he says, and tries to stand. His body doesn’t seem to be willing to cooperate with him, and trying to move makes his mouth fill with blood. At least he manages to spit that into the bucket, too, even if it definitely makes Iris believe him less that he’s ‘okay’. “Iris, I have to go.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” she says firmly, keeping him easily in place with one hand while she fumbles for her phone with the other. Probably going to call Barry. “We have _ got _ to get you to a _ real _doctor. I don’t think you coughing up blood is a good sign.”

Some stupid part of Cisco wants to correct her and say that he wasn’t _ coughing _it up, it’s just that he tried to move and suddenly it was in his mouth and it’s not like he could do much more than spit it out and try to avoid getting it on either of them. But he doesn’t say that. Instead, even though it sends another rush of pain through his body, he pulls on the thread of the multiverse that opens breaches and falls right through the bed as Iris’s fingers close on empty air. 

* * *

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. What would you do if you knew something bad was going to happen?

Cisco sits on the steps of his high school and gazes off into nothingness. He likes to come here when he needs to think. It’s right by the little case with Armando’s name on it. The trophies. The familiar flat cement walls and soccer field Dante used to sit by because he didn’t get weird looks when he was by himself. It’s not _ pretty. _And it’s kind of eerie at night. But it’s familiar.

The problem with Cisco and thinking is that once he starts and gets in his own head about it, he doesn’t stop. His brain just keeps going until he can’t think anymore. Which was a trait that his math and science teachers said was “part of an admirable work ethic” and Dante said was “going to get him picked on if he’s not careful.”

Cisco thinks about death. And other bad things. Natural disasters. Injuries that leave people in pain for the rest of their lives. Abuse. Terrible, horrible things. And he thinks about his friends. He thinks about what he saw, earlier that day, in each of their futures, and he hugs his knees up to his chest and tries not to cry because he doesn’t know what to _ do. _

The right thing to do would be to tell them. That’s what Barry did when he saw Iris die in the future. He told them. More importantly than that, he told _ Iris. _ And then, when everyone else finally figured out that “Vanishes in Crisis” meant _ “Vanishes in Freaking Crisis and Doesn’t Come Back,” _ which Cisco had done at least two years prior, Barry had told them about _ that, _too. So the right thing to do was to tell them. Even if he also has to tell them that he saw it when he drifted too far.

But… the things Cisco had seen while he was spinning far above the rest of them… some of them wouldn’t happen for years. It’s not fair to let that sort of thing hang over people’s heads, ready to drop at any second. Sure, not all of it is bad. But if he tells Iris about her wonderful grandkids, he’s going to have to tell her about how the speedforce is always going to try to claim what belongs to it-that Barry will always be haunted by it, not freed by it the way Wally is. He won’t be able to stop himself.

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. Is it better to know about your own death before it happens?

Cisco’s mind drifts to Armando. The empty grave. Dante getting farther and farther away from him, pushing himself into spirals of self-destruction because he believed it was his fault Armando was gone. His parents hardly speaking to either of them until suddenly they had eyes only for Dante, all their expectations falling to their now-eldest son as they found it more and more difficult to relate to Cisco, whose grief they couldn’t understand. 

They could deal with a self-destructive child. It was only to be expected after watching one of the most important people in your life _ die. _ But Cisco, who swallowed down all the pain and the unspeakable knowledge that Armando had died saving _ him, _ and decided that he was going to make sure nothing like that ever happened again through the power of _ science, _didn’t click with them. Cisco didn’t blame them. No parents should have to deal with burying their first-born child in an empty grave.

Were there other people who felt like this? When Armando was about to die? Did people know and not tell them? Did people know and decide to keep the information to themselves? Maybe Dante would have wanted to know, even if he couldn’t change it. Maybe Cisco’s younger self would have liked to have been given a real opportunity to say goodbye to something that wasn’t a useless headstone. It’s not fair. It was never fair.

Would Armando have wanted to know? That they were never going to go to college, get a degree and a stable job, marry a nice girl and settle down the way that they had planned to? Or had it been better for them to keep hoping that one day things would be exactly how they’d always planned? Cisco tried to imagine everything that he had seen while he was spinning with Armando inserted into the mix, there from the start like he’d always wanted them to be.

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. No, Cisco decides. Armando wouldn’t have wanted to know. (But maybe if Armando _ had _been there, they would have been the kind of person who could have kept him from going to far and losing everyone else in the time it took for Cisco to blink.)

So should he keep the information he has to himself? The horrible images seared into his brain that he doesn’t know what to do with-should he share them or not? What’s worse, murder or suicide? At least Barry dies in the line of duty, saving the world, and Wally will always be the Flash after him, and on and on and on. Speedsters protecting the world until the sun burns out. Cisco remembers that. How he kept track of them.

Cisco bites the inside of his cheek. There can’t be a blanket rule on not telling them, he decides. Or at least, it’s as close as he can get to deciding. If he sees something new, something recent, he has to stop it. If he has the chance to in the future, he has to stop that too. And… and if it’s something like Barry’s death, which ensures the survival of their universe, he can’t stop it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, don’t they?

Even if the needs of the few are also the needs of his friends. Even if Iris will never be the same, even though she has her whole family around her. Even if her kids grow up without their father in a world that hates them. He can’t stop Barry from saving the world. No matter if it’s at the cost of his own life. That’s the right choice, isn’t it? Are there even any right choices anymore? Or are there just… _ choices? _

Cisco tilts his head back and tries not to cry. “It’s not fair,” he whispers, and the Earth creaks in agreement with him as he feels his way down through the layers of the crust into that beautiful vibrating core he can so easily break. “It’s not _ fair! _How come I have to decide?”

_ Life’s not fair. _ Nothing is fair. Why should the multiverse be fair about this, when it’s been so fickle about everything else? Just because Cisco _ wants _it to be? It’s not fair. It was never fair. Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes.

They’d hate him, he knows that, if they knew that he saw all these things and didn’t say anything. If they knew about all the crises he’s seen. The times the world has been in danger. The times _ people _have been in danger. But he can’t tell them. Armando wouldn’t want to know. Armando wouldn’t want him to tell them. Not unless he knew for certain that he could stop it.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t. Maybe he could stop Hunter when he comes back to “improve” Wally. Maybe he could stop Dr. Light. Maybe he could stop the Joker, Black Hand, the Riddler, Grodd, Ivo, Chronos, Sonar, President Thawne, all of them. But it’s all _ maybe, _because he doesn’t know. He just doesn’t know.

Cisco trembles. It’s dark out and he’s all alone, sitting by himself outside of a Detroit high school. He should go home. He should go back to STAR to see Iris or he should go to a real hospital and he should wipe the blood off his face. It’s just not fair. What’s the _ point _ in continuing on like he’s a normal person? Why is he even doing _ any of this? _ Is it because he made a stupid mistake and stepped too far into his powers, got caught in the too-fast _ whirlwind _that is the multiverse’s vibrations?

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. It’s his own fault, anyway. He’s the one who went too far in. He’s the one who looked out over that endless starlit ocean. He’s the one who decided to be a damn _ superhero _ with this powers instead of doing what’s best for everyone and just _ leaving _before he could get attached. Before he could make tethers with his powers that it hadn’t hurt to break, but had hurt to forget.

Cisco turns to look at the place where Armando’s memorial would be visible if he were standing on the other side of the cement wall, and he’s still looking at it as he hears the sound of a speedster skidding to a halt behind him, kicking up sparks in their vibrational wake like they’re a damn neon sign.

“Iris said you needed to go to the hospital,” Barry says. He’s just normal Barry, not Barry-as-the-Flash. That’s somehow comforting. It’s easier to look at a face than at a mask, even if it’s a mask you designed yourself. Not that Cisco _ is _ looking at him. He can feel the vibrations in the way the air hits Barry’s skin. He can _ feel _that he’s in normal clothes. Why turn around for an observation as mundane as that one? “She was worried you’d accidentally breached yourself into the ocean, or something.”

“I don’t make mistakes like that anymore.” Cisco’s voice sounds far away to his own ears. He turns to Barry, eyes as distant as the clouds above them. “I just needed to be alone for awhile. Everything is fine.” Even as he says that, Cisco wipes blood away from his nose and mouth. Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes, all the damage that a normal vibe can do to you folded in on itself. “You can leave.”

“I know I haven’t been the greatest friend lately,” Barry begins awkwardly, and Cisco clenches his jaw, because this is clearly the _ opposite _of leaving, “but we all know that something’s been up with you for awhile. We all saw you collapse today, Cisco. It looked like something was really wrong. Iris wanted to take you to a real hospital right then and there, but Caitlin said it probably wasn’t a good idea, so we-”

“I don’t care, Barry,” Cisco snaps. It hurts to speak. How come he never noticed that before? How come he hasn’t thought of sound as just another form of vibrations before? Just another thing that he can grab and use? He did that in the timeline that he saw. Controlled sound. Controlled _ every _vibration, not just the multiversal ones. “Okay? I just don’t care.”

Barry falters. Cisco hops forward over the small cement stairs and lands in front of him, pushing him back by taking small steps forward. Something’s bubbling under his skin. All the anger and resentment that he feels toward the multiverse for putting this burden on him coupled with all the anger he’s felt toward his friends for the past few days. 

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. Is that why he saw a world where he let go of them? Is it because of them, because of that vision, that he feels so hopeless and helpless right now? Does that mean he deserves it, then? He squeezes his hands into fists.

Barry looks at him sadly. “We’ve all been where you’ve been,” he says gently, unaware that hot anger has suddenly started twisting deep in Cisco’s gut. “We all understand what you’re going through, especially me. You don’t have to go through it alone.”

Cisco thinks about the endless ocean and vibes within themselves so far down you don’t know which way will take you back to the surface and which way will only lead you deeper and worlds where he forgets his friends and worlds where he ends it all right now and the ability to shake the Earth apart and what it’s like to see your friends die and something inside of him makes a dull crunching sound.

“No, you haven’t,” Cisco spits, his fingers steaming in the frigid night air. “You haven’t-you haven’t gone through this and you _ don’t _ know what it feels like. Did you know that I’ve heard exactly what your breathing sounds like as you die? Did you know that even a gold-plate wedding band can go straight through someone’s lungs like it’s the real thing?” His voice gets even louder. “You don’t see this stuff every time you blink! You don’t know what it’s like to get so lost in the multiverse you forget your feet are still on the ground! You-you _ don’t _ know what these powers are like, Barry. You _ don’t. _Okay? So can you stop fucking acting like you do?”

For a long moment Cisco just stares at him as blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth. Cisco’s angry words hang in the air between them, practically visible on the condensation from their breathing. Cisco knows his trembling must be as visible to Barry as Barry’s shock is to him, but he just can’t bring himself to care about that right now. Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes.

“I...I’m sorry.” Barry looks away first. Cisco feels a sick sense of satisfaction that he actually got him to _ listen _to him for what feels like is the first time in ages. Finally, Barry’s not treating him like they’re the same person. “I’m sorry, Cisco. I didn’t know that’s-I didn’t know that’s how they were for you. I’m sorry.”

Cisco scuffles his shoe on the ground. His throat hurts even more now from yelling, and the anger is slowly dripping out of him. He wipes some more blood away on his sleeve. He pushes down tears and tries-and fails-to push kaleidoscope vibes from his mind. “You don’t have to be sorry,” Cisco says stiffly. “I overreacted.”

“But that doesn’t mean-I mean, I should have known. That our powers were different.” Barry steps forward and reaches to wipe off some blood. Cisco jerks his head away. “Look, Cisco. We can talk about this later, okay? You need medical attention. You shouldn’t have left STAR unless it was to go to a real hospital and see a real doctor.”

Cisco marginally adjusts his internal vibrations to promote healing and shakes his head. “It’s just a little blood. It happens to me all the time. I’m fine. Look, Barry, I kind of need to be alone right now, okay? I came here so I could get away from everyone. I didn’t want anybody to follow me here. Can you just leave me alone?”

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. What the hell is he supposed to do about _ any _of this except scream about how unfair it is? At least Barry steps back again, looking hurt as he awkwardly stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I don’t think I should,” he says quietly. Maybe he thinks Cisco will punch him. “Why don’t you come back with me? Everyone is worried about you.”

Cisco swallows thickly. The ocean is tugging at his legs again. Armando’s memorial is behind him. He knows he should say something. Yes or no, even if Barry will only take ‘yes’ as an answer. But he can’t bring himself to speak for a long, long time, and when he finally can, all he can do is hoarsely say, “I’m afraid of seeing you die again. Because once that happens-that’s when it starts, I think. When I start drifting and don’t come back.”

“Drifting?” Barry asks. He doesn’t make the Pacific Rim joke that Cisco knows is on the tip of his tongue. Small mercies. At least he seems to be trying to exercise tact for once. “Do you mean, like, dissociating?”

Cisco shakes his head. Then shrugs a little, because he technically _ does _ actually dissociate, it’s just not what he’s talking about. “No. It’s not like that. It’s like-” He can’t find words for it in a way that Barry will understand. Barry’s been lost in the speedforce before. Several times. Once for months straight. And he _ will _be lost forever in it, one day, when he disappears. “It’s like floating on your back in the ocean where you know the water is too deep to stand. It’s-it’s hard to explain.”

“Keep trying,” Barry encourages. He must be freezing, his shirt is thin. Cisco realizes that he himself is vibrating slightly in place to warm himself up alongside the healing rumbles in his chest. He wonders if Barry could do it, if he tried. If he’d ever think to try such a practical use for his powers. “I want to understand. Okay, Cisco? I want to understand how you’re feeling.”

“You won’t _ understand,” _ Cisco sighs. Speedsters were technically interdimensional, but not in the way where they would understand what he could do. Cindy and Breacher were the only two who weren’t doppelgängers of himself that he’d ever come across who possibly _ could. _Even the interdimensional warpers (not breachers, there was a strong distinction there) he’d come across didn’t have powers like he did, though they were arguably just as powerful as him. 

(But how did he _ know _ that was the case? Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes, spiralling downward and out until he couldn’t contain them within his chest anymore. Until they swallowed him up and spat him out and left him for dead because in the end he just couldn’t _ handle _the blistering power inside him.)

“Then help me understand.” Barry’s clearly getting frustrated, but at least he’s making an effort to hide it. A failed effort. But a failed effort is still an effort, and it still means something similar in the end. “I really want to understand it, Cisco. I really, really do. I promise.”

Cisco sets his shoulders. Vibes in vibes in vibes. Barry may not be able to understand. He might not ever realize fully what Cisco’s trying to tell him. But… it might not matter. That thought alone almost takes Barry’s breath away. It might not really matter. As long as he tries to understand it and accepts that what Cisco’s telling him isn’t a joke or something he can just brush off… it might be good to finally get it off his chest. What better way to ensure that he doesn’t forget about his friends than to tie himself more firmly to them now?

Before he can actually respond, the spiderweb of vibrations that he’s the centerpoint of wiggles once, and then Barry’s hugging him tightly, rubbing his back with one hand and squeezing him closer with the other. “I want to understand, Cisco. Please believe me. I don’t want you to have to go through this alone anymore. You’re not alone. You don’t have to be.”

Cisco swallows and tastes blood, and the words “I don’t want to be alone” come spilling out into the cold air before he can really stop them. He doesn’t know how Barry will take that, because there’s a difference between going through things alone and actually _ being _alone, and he’s pretty sure Barry only knows about one of the two. Cisco’s intimately familiar with both. Sure enough-

“You’re not alone,” Barry says fast. “I mean-even if I don’t get what it’s like to have your powers, or-or something, I’m here for you. We’re all here for you.” He still hasn’t let go, letting Cisco push his nose into his shoulder, disregarding the blood he knows Cisco must be smearing on his shirt by accident. If Caitlin were there she’d be saying that was a biohazard. “We love you, Cisco. All of us. And I’m-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry if I let you forget that. I know I haven’t been the greatest friend to you, and I know I’ve been caught up in my own head, and-I’m just really sorry. For all of it. You’re my best friend, Cisco. I’m sorry.”

Cisco wants to call him out. Demand to know how he knows that this isn’t another false apology. That they’re not going to have to do this again in a few months, when the next big crisis hits and Barry gets lost in his own problems _ again, _ and Cisco once again falls back to the sidelines. He knows saying that would be pretty selfish, and he doesn’t really _ want _to be Barry’s first priority, especially if something like that came at Iris’ expense, but he wants to say it anyway. He wants to say it so badly, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

Somehow, that feels like it might be more of an admission of who he is inside than a thousand lived lifetimes of watching things shatter under his feet like ice in warm water ever could. The idea that he could choose not to yell at someone makes something inside of him ache. Cisco’s not quite sure what. He’s too tired to think about it all the way.

“Okay,” he says instead. He tries to take a deep breath and finds that he can’t. His head hurts. Differently from the way it usually does, more like he’s been held upside down and shaken than like someone’s driving a nail the size of a railroad spike through his skull. “Okay.”

Vibes in vibes in vibes in vibes. Cisco doesn’t know to do now that he knows something bad is going to happen. And maybe he doesn’t have a long time to figure it out. But maybe he doesn’t have to go through it alone. Maybe this time when he starts to drift away, he’ll have people who’ll notice. People who will help him be able to tie himself back down to Earth.

Fifty years is a long time. Anything can happen. But the future isn’t set in stone. It never has been.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @augustheart on tumblr, and while I haven't been posting about the Flash all that much lately, I'll always love Cisco.


End file.
